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02/28/2006:

"Border Plan Seen as U.S. Conceit"

MEXICO CITY — "The wall" does not yet exist, and it may never be built, but already the proposed 700 miles of fencing and electric sensors loom like a new Berlin Wall in the Latin American imagination.

The plan for a barrier along the border with Mexico was approved by the U.S. House in December and is scheduled to be debated by the Senate next month.

El muro, as it is called in Spanish, has been in the news for weeks not only in countries such as Mexico and El Salvador that are increasingly dependent on the money migrants send back home, but also those farther away, such as Argentina and Chile. Across the region, el muro is seen as an ominous new symbol of the United States' unchecked power.

"The U.S. government has fostered an atmosphere of collective paranoia, given a green light to its spies … and institutionalized torture," Salvadoran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya said. "The only thing missing was a wall."
commondreams.org